NEWSROOM

China E-Commerce Sales Exceeded $1 Trillion in 2012

Wednesday, June 05 2013

CHINA | A latest report released by the Ministry of Commerce of China showed that the volume of China’s e-commerce market transaction reached RMB 8.1 trillion ($1.32 trillion) in 2012, with a growth rate 4 times GDP, and a 31.7% increase rate yoy.

Last year China’s online retail market scale reached over RMB 1.3 trillion, up 67.5 % from a year earlier and almost equaled 4.7 times the year’s total retail sales of social consumer goods. The e-commerce industry is booming rapidly, and the annual size of the industry has already hit more than RMB 200 billion.

Notably, the cross-border e-commerce model has been surging to be a new hot growth point. The last two years saw the increase rate of 33% and 25% respectively in this field, which were much higher than those of the foreign trade market. As to the difficulties in customs clearance?exchange settlement, and tax rebate, related departments have been studying on these issues to promote a more standardized system for the cross-border e-commerce.

Days ago Gu Dawei, deputy director at the National Development and Reform Commission revealed that in the near future about 40 sets of standardized industry criteria, 86 policies in regard to the development of China’s e-commerce market will be released. Altogether 13 departments are involved such as the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, National Bureau of Quality Inspection, Central Bank of China, etc. All these moves aim to establish a reliable trading platform that facilitates the application of mobile payment, online invoices and electronic archives. Furthermore, the Ministry of Commerce will take charge of the circulation field, focusing on the policies involving online auction, logistics and online payment.

According to the report, in the future we are likely to see the emergence of e-commerce in industries as steel, cars, energy, equipment manufacturing, and in service sectors like tourism, food, medicine and even transportation and agriculture.